Though years had passed since last he entered the church, Kenneth noticed that it stood as it always had, save that it looked more down-at-heel than formerly. Before the door stood the same little groups, eagerly snatching a few words of conversation before entering. Near the door were ranged the young men, garbed in raiment of varied and brilliant hue, ogling the girls as they passed in with their parents. There was much good-natured badinage and scuffling among the youths, with an occasional burst of ribald laughter at the momentary discomfiture of one of their number. As he passed them, Kenneth smiled to himself as he remembered how he but a few years since had been one of that crowd around the same door. That is, one of the crowd until his father, with a stern word or perhaps only a meaningful glance, had been wont to summon him within the church. Often had he been teased unmercifully by the other boys when one of these summonses had come.
Though the jests had been hard to bear, the likelihood of paternal wrath had been too unpleasant an alternative for him to dare disregard his father’s commands.
Kenneth noticed the vestibule had survived the passage of years without apparent change, if one disregarded the increased dinginess of the carpet. There was the same glass-covered bulletin board with its list of the sick and of those who were delinquent in the payment of their dues. There was the same dangling rope with a loop at the end of it, and the same sexton was about to ring the bell above, announcing the beginning of the morning service. There were the same yellowed walls, the same leather-covered swinging doors with the same greasy spots where countless hands had pushed them to enter the auditorium of the church. Kenneth smiled to himself as he remembered how he once had declared in a dispute with a boy whose parents attended the Methodist church near by that the Mount Zion Baptist Church was “the biggest and finest church in the whole world.” He thought of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, of St. Paul’s in London, as he recalled the boast of his youth.
Inside, the same air of unchanging permanence seemed also to have ruled. As he followed the officious usher and his mother and sister to their pew, Kenneth noted the same rows of hard seats worn shiny by years of use, the same choir loft to the left of the pulpit with its faded red curtains. The same worn Bible lay open on the pulpit kept open by a hymn-book. Beside it was the same ornately carved silver pitcher and goblet. Kenneth felt as though he had never left Central City when he looked for and found the patches of calcimine hanging from the ceiling and the yellowed marks on the walls made by water dripping from leaks in the roof. As a boy he had amused himself during seemingly interminable sermons by constructing all sorts of fanciful stories around these same marks, seeing in them weirdly shaped animals. Once he had laughed aloud when, after gazing at one of them, it had suddenly dawned upon him that the shadow cast by a pendent flake of calcimine resembled the lean and hungry-looking preacher who was pastoring Mount Zion at the time. Kenneth would never forget the commotion his sudden laughter had caused, nor the whipping he received when he and his father reached home that Sunday.
The hum of conversation ceased. The pastor, the Reverend Ezekiel Wilson, entered the pulpit from a little door back of it. The choir sang lustily the Doxology. All the familiar services came back to Kenneth as he sat and looked at the dusky faces around him.
Preliminaries ended, the Reverend Wilson began to preach. He was a fat, pompous, oily man—with a smooth and unctuous manner. His voice sank at times to a whisper—at others, roared until the rafters of the building seemed to ring with its echoes. He played on it as consciously as the dried-up little organist in the gaily coloured bonnet did on the keys of the asthmatic little organ. His text was taken from the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, first verse that familiar text, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
Slowly, softly, he began to speak.
“Breddern and sisters, they’s a lot of you folks right here this mawnin’ what thinks you is Christ’uns. You think jus’ ‘cause you comes here ev’ry Sunday and sings and shouts and rants around dat you is got the sperit of Jesus in you. Well, I’m tellin’ you this mawnin’ dat you’d better wake up and get yo’self right with God, ’cause you ain’t no mo Christ’un dan if you neveh been to chu’ch a-tall. De Good Book says you got to have char’ty, and de Good Book don’t lie.”
There came from the Amen corner a fervently shouted “Amen!” From another came as equally fervid a shout: “Ain’t it the truth!” The preacher paused for effect. He mopped his brow and glared around the congregation. His auditors sat in expectant silence. Suddenly he lashed out in scathing arraignment of the sins of his flock. Each and every one of its faults he pilloried with words of fire and brimstone. He painted a vivid and uncomfortably realistic picture of a burning Hell into which all sinners would inevitably be cast. Almost with the air of a hypnotist, he gradually advanced the tempo of his speech. Like a wind playing over a field of corn, swaying the tops of the stalks as it wills, so did he play on the emotions and fears and passions of his congregation. Only a master of human psychology could have done it. It was a living, breathing, vengeful God he preached, and his auditors fearfully swayed and rocked to and fro as he lashed them unmercifully. Lips compressed, there came from them a nasal confirmation of the preacher’s words that ranged from deep, guttural grunts of approval as he scored a point to a high-pitched rising and falling moan that sounded like nothing so much as a child blowing through tissue paper stretched over a comb. Frequently the preacher would without perceptible pause swing into a rolling, swinging, half-moaning song which the congregation took up with fervour. The beat was steadily advanced by the leader until he and his audience were worked up to an emotional ecstasy bordering on hysteria. His jeremiad ended, the preacher painted a glowing picture of the ineffable peace and joy that came to those who rested their faith in Him who died for the remission of their sins.
A tumultuous thunderous climax—a dramatic pause and then he swung into a fervent prayer in which the preacher talked as though his God were an intimate friend and confidant. The entire drama lasting more than an hour was thrilling and enervating and theatric. Yet beneath it lay a devout sincerity that removed the scene from the absurd to that which bordered on the magnificent. To these humble folk their religion was the most important thing in their lives, and, after all, what matters it what a man does? It is the spirit in which he performs an act that makes it dignified or pathetic or ludicrous—not the act itself.